Sussex Co. Habitat for Humanity receives national award

Sussex County Habitat for Humanity recently was named the winner of the Collegiate Challenge Host Affiliate of the Year Award for 2012.

By Scott Goss

Sussex County Habitat for Humanity recently was named the winner of the Collegiate Challenge Host Affiliate of the Year Award for 2012.

SCHFH was chosen to receive the award out of 1,553 Habitat affiliates in the United States.

The agency was nominated by multiple students groups who participated in last year’s collegiate challenge, which provides college students with an opportunity to volunteer on Habitat projects in place of traditional spring break trips.

Most of the student groups stay at St. Phillips Church in Laurel, which recently received the outstanding volunteer award for volunteer service from Gov. Jack Markell.

Each day they commute to different job sites and work on Habitat projects throughout the county.

“It was a team effort,” SCHFH Executive Director Kevin Gilmore said of the recent honor, “from the parishioners at St. Phillips in Laurel who housed them, to the AmeriCorps Construction team for assuring that each group received proper education, skill instruction and safety rules, to our regular volunteers for their instruction, to our family services crew for assuring that teams met with our partner families, and to both (youth coordinator) Tyler Fitzgerald and (volunteer coordinator) Lyndsay Humphreys, who assured each team had a mission, concrete goals and an experience to last a lifetime.”

Fourteen teams are registered to participate in this year’s collegiate challenge from February to April, which will focus on two homes in Seaford.